


spelled in bones

by mothinthearclight



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death Magic, F/F, Magical Tattoos, Mildly Dubious Consent, Steppes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8368726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothinthearclight/pseuds/mothinthearclight
Summary: A witch comes to kill the descendant of a goddess. A war goddess.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knightswatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightswatch/gifts).



> hello giftee! you didnt give any preferences or anything in your request so I hope you dont mind me taking 'witch' and 'female knight' as... jumping off points. enjoy!!!

When the captain of the guard returned from her patrol at down; Meira was there on the battlements to watch. In the hard morning light of the scrublands, the captain's breastplate gleamed dully. No time for spit and polish in the wastes. Or no interest. Meira drew her coat more closely around her, against the cold, and drew her hand over the sand-colored wall. The power in the fortress's bones felt purposive, rather than lazy, this morning.

No one had stopped her climbing the stairs to the walls. The guards walked mutely past Meira as she watched the guard-captain dismount and hand her horse off to a stablehand. She wore the chain of an Imperial sorcerer, and no one would dare question one of her rank, regardless of their foreign looks. So, too, would no one question whether she truly came with the empress's mandate, or whether her credentials were forged—no one could be so foolish. Nothing in this world of rain and bile could be worth such a risk, they would have reasoned, behind closed doors, after ushering her to the fortress's shabby best guest room.

She had walked the halls for three days, waiting for the guard-captain's return, oddly weightless, taking their measure. The soldiers and servants were immaterial; the lordling who commanded the fortress, a young fool; Meira could break them all with a thought. But the fortress's own energy was hungry, in the lazy, slow, plodding way of a _place._ It had tasted war once, and would taste it again. A deep cut to her inner thigh, her own life's blood spilled on its parched, chilled ground, and its energy, the power of the land it sat on, were hers to draw upon. It was a pact she had made not infrequently, in her life. She never stayed in one place long enough for the place to demand much of her in return.

Now: a blue-uniform lieutenants rushed up to their guard captain to tell them what news they had. The imperial sorcerer, come to visit their home. The captain pulled off her helmet, nodded, and turned, slowly, plucking her gloves off finger by finger.

Meira felt a hand close around her neck.

She gasped and choked, but she couldn't draw a breath to fill her lungs. She reached for her own magic—no, it had been ripped from her—the fortress's power, the earth below—nothing, nothing—spots and lights danced before her eyes, as she braced herself on the wall before her. The invisible grip flexed, testing its hold on her, as if to say: _What, you can't break out of this? A Kichara war-mage? You, dealer-of-deaths?_ She could feel each individual finger, as thought it were a hand in truth, playing at her flesh. If this was how she was to die, she thought, sagging against the old brick, she _would_ find break through it to her own powers, she would grind this fortress to dust in her death throes.

Then, as easily as it had seized her, the hand released her. Meira's chest heaved as she groped at her throat for bruises that would not be there. A magic powerful enough to keep Meira from her own would be so unsophisticated as to leave visible marks. There was no lingering trace of magic in the air, nothing to point to where it had come from.

Nothing. Nothing but the guard-captain looking up at her, smiling.

-

"Captain Nasrin will see you in her chambers at sundown, lady sorcerer," the lieutenant from the courtyard said. Lieutenant—little more than a girl in armor. Brimming with questions. Meira hardly glanced up from her book to acknowledge the words, or the deep bow, the hasty retreat.

-

Nasrin was gloved, when Meira entered. There was a cup of kaffe on the table, untouched, and It would _stay_ untouched.

"You came all this way to see me," Nasrin said. Her voice was lighter than Meira might have expected, given her height and her muscle, her tight, braided hair. She wore a leather breastplate in her own chambers, for all that her posture was welcoming—expansive, even. What was inside her, what Meira had left her homeland and traveled thousands of miles, by air and by sea, to find, was more than enough to keep Nasrin safe from even the likes of her.

"It was a long ride from the capital," Meira said, putting her hand to her chain of office. That, at least, was real, and had not been stolen without a long and vicious fight.

"Horseshit," said Nasrin. "Every Imperial sorcerer within a thousand miles has poked at me at least once. You're not one of them, so sit down and shut up."

The only other place to sit was Nasrin's low, narrow bed. Meira was not tall; the women of the steppes were enormous. When Nasrin came to stand over her, Meira had to crane her neck to look her in the eyes. She moved, Meira noted, in the part of her that was not mustering all her magics against the coming assault, with the comfortable grace of someone who swung a sword all day: utterly at home in her own form.

Nasrin surveyed her. Hard grey eyes set in a pale gold face. "I hope you realize you're not the first," she began, and peeled off her left glove.

Meira held out her hand, and what should have been pure white bolt of _power_ was—nothing. Her arm dropped, as though all her tendons had been cut, then the strength left her body, and she fell sideways onto the bed.

"I will say," Nasrin went on, "you're certainly the prettiest one, and that's why you're not on the floor right now."

 _How generous,_ Meira would have said, if her tongue had been working. Where her magic had been was nothing—nothing—nothing—again—the word echoed through her head. The only sign that she was a war-mage was the dull ache of the cut on her thigh, which had been _useless_.

Nasrin sat next to her own the bed, stretching her long legs out, and rolled Meira onto her back. She tugged one of the sleeves of her robes up to the elbow, and traced a finger over the tattoos there. Inert, now. They should have sent spikes of thorns into Nasrin's gut, for touching Meira without her permission. "War-mage," Nasrin said, with a low whistle. "City-killer. Army-crusher. Did you visit the Field of Glass as a child? Did you want to know how High Sorcerer Aziza turned your old capital to molten rock? Maybe you thought you could kill her descendant and take that power for yourself."

She sounded perfectly genial, as she rolled up Meira's other sleeve, to look at the rest of her tattoos. They went farther under Meira's clothes: marks of binding, marks of breaking, marks to keep her mind alive even if her body was torn to shreds, a sea of white-and-gold inks on her dark skin. Nasrin passed a disinterested palm over Meira's breast, where her robe had fallen open, baring even more tattoos. "Well," she said, almost to herself, almost—almost—regretful, "it's not possible. This is where you die. Your magics have nothing to do with speech, do they? No? Last words?"

There had been a hold on Meira's throat, which she had hardly noticed; it vanished, now, and she drew a long, shuddering breath. Her last words _would_ be her last, if she did not make them count.

"I don't want to take the power from you," she said hoarsely, "I want to free you from it."

-

It was a lie, of course.

Aziza City-Killer had been touched by the Gods themselves, and, after killing a million souls, she had lived long and been fruitful in daughters; the power recurred once in a generation, and the government of Kichar took it upon themselves to hunt it down and destroy it. How Nasrin had hidden from her own country for so long was a mystery even to Meira's handlers, and of no interest to Meira herself. Nasrin Yellow-Thrush had worked for years to become a knight in the capital, with her pick of assignments, once she'd earned her sword, and had chosen the most desolate place imaginable. The very edge of the world.

A gentle word. A careful, trembling stroke over Nasrin's cheek. _Hope_. All that strength—the strength to strip one of the finest mages in the world of her own, in one hand, and to kill with a thought, in the other—and all Nasrin was wanted was to be rid of it. What a waste.

And so the end had been forestalled, for a few hours, at least. She had known from the start it was a fool's quest, which would end in her violent death, and that survival would require... improvisation. In the interest of surviving to see the sunrise, she let Nasrin guide her head between her strong thighs, to do what captors had done to their helpless captives since the beginning of the world. The indignity did not sting. Nasrin was a power that overmastered her own, and with thoughtless ease. She would not be able to contain it in herself in the morning, but she could take Nasrin's fingers in her cunt, claw at the wall behind her bed, as she babbled the details of the entirely invented ritual she would perform at dawn.

"Surely you don't trust me," Meira said, her face nestled in the crook of Nasrin's neck. It was the warmest she'd been since arriving, at least. The loss of her magic had settled in; she felt ill and weak. She would rather have lost an arm.

"Not as far as I could throw you," Nasrin said, "but by my ancestors, you fuck like a demon when you're scared, and that'll have to do."

-

There were no prayers for a day like this.

An arrow to the throat from a great distance would have done the trick, but there had been previous recurrences who had enough time between the act and their last breath to kill everyone around them. It wasn't a risk Meira was willing to take. So: a clear space, one mile from anywhere people lived.

There were looks, at first light, when the guard-captain and the Imperial sorcerer went to the stables together. Nervous, wide-eyed looks. Everyone had heard the shouts from the captain's rooms. Nasrin tied Meira's hands in front of her, once she was in the saddle. They rode with the reins in Nasrin's left hand and her killer's right hand pressed to Meira's stomach.

It was a waste, for more reasons than the power. She'd brought Meira off twice, long, shuddering orgasms, before they left, and joked about it the entire time—Nasrin was _funny_. Disarming. Meira hadn't expected that. She had to die, all the same. Two miles out there was a patch of flat land, ringed by scrubby little trees. It was far enough from the fortress and the two towns bordering it that no one would be at risk but Meira herself.

"I'll only need my magics for a moment, once we're there," Meira said, her stomach cold and heavy. No chances. No room for failure. She _would_ go through with it, and her sister's daughters, and all her daughter's daughters, would be taken care of for the rest of their lives.

"Sure," Nasrin replied, simply. When they arrived, Nasrin helped her from the horse, and dusted her off. Straightened her hair where her cap had mussed it, and cut the ropes binding her.

Just one moment. Enough to would send Nasrin deep into the earth, crush her in stone, so fast she would have no time to react. Meira took a deep breath, dusted off the front of her trousers, then straightened, only to see—Nasrin's fist, coming at her face—and she was sprawled in the dirt, her head ringing, her jaw... not broken.

"You must think I'm some kind of _fucking idiot_ ," Nasrin said, from a great distance above her. One of her boots gently toed Meira's head so she was looking up, into Nasrin's eyes. "A _ritual_? Is that the best you've got?"

"I was going to put you in the ground," Meira admitted. Stalling for time. Nasrin had cut her off from her power, like a cork stoppering up a bottle, but there had to be some way around it. It couldn't be a perfect seal. She shut her eyes to catalog her tattoos, starting at the ones that ringed her neck, to find a single one that wasn't completely inert. "Break your skull. Send you deep enough fast enough, and you wouldn't have time to kill me, too."

Nasrin scoffed. "See, that's a better plan. Original. I like it. If I wasn't part goddess, or so they tell me, you'd have gotten away with it. As it is..."

There. On the inside of her left wrist, a minor, insignificant sigil of breaking, something she'd drawn on herself for practice as a girl, whose power was tied to a rock in her village, rather than her own life. Meira grabbed Nasrin's ankle, thought _shatter,_ and heard a sickening _crunch,_ followed by Nasrin's exclamation of surprise; her weight shifted to her good leg, and Meira rolled up to her feet, painstakingly, to knock Nasrin to the ground.

And she stayed down. Meira crawled atop her, taking her around the throat with both hands, just as they'd been introduced the day before. Only: more intimate.

"Look at you," Nasrin said, her right hand coming up to run her knuckles over Meira's cheek. Meira refused to flinch from it. "I could kill you as soon as look at you, and you're still at it. Even with a ruined ankle, I could still beat you to death."

"You have to die. I'm going to do it, or kill myself trying," said Meira, frantically working through the rest of her sigils. She just needed a little more time. "Do you flirt with every assassin who takes you out to the steppe to murder you?"

"No. Do you go to bed with everyone you try to kill?"

"No," Meira said, "I don't."

"I guess it's a matter of scale, for your kind. By the time you finished fucking a troupe of soldiers, you'd be too tired to murder them all. Then again, after last night, maybe not."

Nasrin was stalling, too.

For _what?_

As suddenly as she'd been cut off from them, Meira felt her magics return to her, a rush she felt from her fingernails to her teeth. Blinding light. The world in color again. Nasrin took her moment of distraction and flipped them, so that she knelt with her legs spread wide over her.

"I didn't lie about one thing," Nasrin went on, conversational, as though she was _confident_ Meira wasn't going to finish her plan. "I _do_ want to be rid of this." She gestured to herself. Her entire being. "And I want to live. So, you can kill me right now. Or..."

 _You heard her. Cut her throat. Break her neck. Rip her in two,_ Meira's wiser instincts said. _Your death doesn't matter._ Hers _does_.

"Or?" Meira said.

Nasrin put her hand on Meira's chest, precisely on a bare sliver of skin, where a white line glowed, now, prepared to defend. "Or I can give it to you."

"I would die."

"You don't know that. It's been done in my line before. A stranger comes to your house in the middle of the night saying she's your cousin, puts her hand on your forehead, and all of a sudden you're not human anymore."

"You're all god-blooded."

"How strong do you think the blood is, at this point? Aziza lived seven hundred years ago. Who's better suited to contain this than someone like you? I disappear, I start over, the... what do you people call it, the recurrence is dead, as far as everyone knows; and you get to walk around with a goddess's power in your hand. Not a bad deal."

Meira, pinned to the hard ground, strained against Nasrin's grip. It was possible that she was being toyed with. It was equally possible that the edge of desperation in Nasrin's voice was entirely real, and Meira was the answer to all of her prayers.

The power to kill, and the power to spare. The power to render those around her helpless as she had been rendered. If she was a good person, she would deny it; but she was not good. She had never _been_ good.

"Demons take me," Meira whispered. "I want it."

Nasrin smiled, sadly, and touched her forehead.

-

It was a blazing fire.

It was a forest, and the world within a forest.

It was cold as the stars, and deep as the ocean.

It wanted to strip the flesh from her bones. It wanted to destroy her, as she had committed her life to destruction. No, it wanted to control her, to make her into a mindless weapon. No—no. No. Meira was aware of herself as a body, writhing beneath Nasrin's hold, of the lines of her tattoos, arranging themselves, without regard to her flesh or bones, of her mind, straining to contain _this_ : a goddess's power, wedded to human flesh. Every magic she had learned, or learned of, or attempted, was a pale imitation of what ran through her veins now. This was the source, the original. What humans had been striving for their entire existence, and never managed.

And when it was over, Meira fainted.

Not for long. Nasrin slapped her hard across the face, bringing her back to herself.

"Don't you fucking _dare_ die on me," she said, and her voice was a tinny echo. "I am _not_ playing host for that shit for even one more second, this is the _third time_ I've tried, you're the only one insane enough for it to work—"

"Don't hit me again," Meira said, her voice hoarse. She opened her eyes. The world was so clear, now. She could feel Nasrin's beating heart. She could feel the beating heart of a sparrow in the sky far above them. She stopped it, and felt its dying confusion... then she brought it back. She had not known the powers could do that. "I can kill you as soon as look at you, you know."

Nasrin rolled off of her to sit in the scrub, look up at the sky. "Thank the gods," she said. "Thank every god."

Meira sat up next to her. It was nothing to reach down and repair her ankle. Like breathing. Nasrin didn't react to it. "You're free."

"You're not."

Nasrin covered Meira's right hand with her left, and suddenly all

"You didn't think I was going to let you run off with _everything_ , did you?" Nasrin said. "I never wanted to kill, but you seem fine with it. If you run wild, wherever you are, I'll find you and can stop you. In fact, wherever you're going, I want to go. You can't go home now, can you?"

No. She could, perhaps, but she would be found out. She opened her robe to see the sigils on her chest rearranged into the symbol of the war-goddess. As soon as she took a lover, or was seen at the baths, she would be found out. The thought was... "I have family," Meira said. "A sister, nieces."

"They'll live without you," Nasrin said, "just like my garrison will live without me."

"You would do it—you would run?"

"I've been running from this my whole life. I'm good at it," said Nasrin. She got to her feet, slowly. She offered Meira a hand. "Want to give it a shot?"


End file.
